NO TIME FOR CITIZENSHIP: LEADERSHIP OF CITIZENSHIP EDUCATION IN AN ACCOUNTABILITY-BASED SCHOOL CONTEXT

This multiple case study, carried out in six chilean secondary schools of different administrative dependence, explores the challenges of a field that has gained relevance: how to lead the implementation of Citizen Education in order to promote civic and citizen participation of students in an commercialized educational system, where managerialism places focus on accountability and results, permeating the subjectivity of the educational actors and where, on the other part, various reforms have been made to public policy in Citizen Education seeking to develop active and critical citizens. The Ethical Leadership lens us used, associated to the moral imperative of education, that allows to analyze the tensions involved in Citizen Education. Interviews, observations, and documentary analysis were carried out and the way in which planning, accountability and evaluation instruments shape Citizen Education's discourses and practices was explored, using tools from the Critical Discourse Analysis, which sees discourse as a place for power battles, that express specific ideologies. The results show that Citizen Education shifts before the supremacy of mandatory content and standardized tests, where leaders sometimes appear as putting pressure on this direction, which is perceived by teachers, causing for a limited and content -based approach to Citizen Education. However, resistance to this logic has been identified, which allows for the emergence of Citizen Education, both from teacher and student initiatives, which imply a more practical, critical, controversial, and political notion of Citizen Education. It is concluded that educational policies and Citizen Education instruments are mainly approached as the fulfillment of an obligation and do not permeate Citizen Education practices in school's daily life. However, opportunities for an ethical leadership in Citizen Education are identified, which requiere a position that will resist the pressure of the system to focus on results and accountability and embrace a maximalist notion of Citizen Education where leaders have an active role in prioritizing this education, making it transversal, integrating it to the curriculum, and institutionalizing and supporting teacher and student initiatives that address it. In the same way, it appears as necessary to have a more flexible use of Citizen Education instruments by leaders that have a supervisory role, so they do not limit the current approach to Citizen Education and allow to focus on the dimensions of policy, student representation and relationships with the community, that are a part of it.